It comes as a shock to many, therefore to learn that the majority of the labor force in the United States works for government, unincorporated busine… - Neil H. Jacoby

Motivated partly by the decision to convert its navy from coal to oil, the British government ultimately acquired a major interest in what was then the only oil-producing company in the Middle East.

Lubrication payments are not subject to a going rate. They are usually determined by what the traffic will bear. The usual way for a government official to extract a payment is by threatening obstruction or delay in carrying out his official duties… Large political payments are rarely transferred directly by a principal to an upper echelon official; rather, a middleman is used. He may be a professional ‘fixer’ who is himself a low-level government functionary; more often he will be a member of the same family as the high-level recipient.

Before World War II, the United States Gulf and the Caribbean were the foreign world’s primary sources of crude oil. Eastern Hemisphere consumption was relatively small and yet its crude oil production supplied less than half of its petroleum needs.